Talk:US Marines Midrange Threat Estimate 2005-2015

From WikiLeaks

Thoughts and analysis

Interesting document about what the Marines fear will come to pass in the next 6 years or so.

Analysis:

In any conflict with a technologically sophisticated adversary with a degree of cohesion in their societies, the U.S. faces significant challenges. But they are not insurmountable. The U.S. does not believe itself to be seriously threatened in terms of military dominance until around 2020 or so.

Unspoken assumptions: generals always get ready to fight the last war that their country was in. The last war (still ongoing) is a counterinsurgency operation featuring low-intensity combat, in a target-lean environment, where the rules of war are and were gravely breached by the enemy--see 9/11 and the post-9/11 tactics adopted by certain OPFOR units, like beheading of civilians, kidnappings, suicide bombings of civilians, etc...and then are and were breached by the U.S.--see Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, John Yoo, waterboarding. This war is being fought by a force designed to counteract Cold War threats and exploit Cold War opportunities; it is slowly shifting into a force designed for counterinsurgency, low-intensity conflict, and asymmetric operations. But what of the war taking place the day after tomorrow? Will it involve the jihad? Or someone new? And will we be ready to fight it?

This is not meant to suggest a moral equivalence, but I would dare to suggest the U.S. is held to and is bound by higher standards than the common fanatic jihadi; after all, we are supposed to be a civilized nation; how can we teach people to be civilized by acting like a bunch of barbarians ourselves, on occasion? (Admittedly, we have acted as a higher grade of barbarian, perhaps we have the ethics of half-civilized Visigoths, only engaging in a spot of torture here and there, compared to the jihad's values of Mongol hordes sweeping out of the steppes to pillage, murder, sack, conquer, and destroy.) Assuming that we're not in a fight to the death--we are not, unlike World War II, the moral high ground is the place that we need to capture first, hold, and keep against any friendly or enemy assault (and even in World War II, we took, held, and kept the moral high ground). You cannot look good without being good, not in this world that understands spin; by blurring the boundaries between the enemy and yourself, our enemies are strengthened and our cause weakened. Torturing terrorists is giving aid and comfort to them, by becoming the demon who they want to destroy.

The shift going on in the Marines' doctrine is expected, and at least they look to the future to see how their forces can be adopted to the present and future battle.

Air power is only effective if air superiority can be gained. Most adversaries would rather take the less costly option of using SAMs to comprehensively deny airspace to American forces (and their own) rather than the more costly option of facing American forces using an expensive fleet of manned fighters. Stealth is defeatable, and most of our planes aren't stealth. An enemy comprehensively armed with the finest Russian SAM systems (SA-3/400 PMU and the like) and MANPADs, combined with decent training, would be a formidable opponent indeed.

This isn't to say that SAMs can't be defeated. The question is - is the cost too high to do so, in both equipment and blood? This is a question that has no easy answer.

One possible solution might be to use drone swarms to accompany combat aircraft on missions; they could serve as decoys, a cheap shield against SAMs, since SAMs have a hard time differentiating between targets, and the drones could evolve into weapons systems themselves, given advances in computer science.

In maneuver or attrition warfare, the U.S. has a good deal of advantage. Urban combat, or COIN operations decrease U.S. advantages: massive firepower and dominant maneuver. Urban combat and counterinsurgency are nightmares for traditional armies, including that of the U.S.: the question is how to turn a nightmare into an advantage?

Night. Your enemy cannot see in the dark.

Cellular units. Stamping on a thousand flies is harder than stamping on one big fly. Even more so if the thousand flies move as one unit through pervasive networking.

Real-time aerial imaging using UAVs.

UAVs with small caliber guns, to suppress snipers and enemies fleeing to high ground with minimal collateral damage.

Robots. In the future there will be robots. Robots with guns.

Obscuring smoke (combined with thermal imaging)

Abilities to concentrate fires into precision devastation--capabilities to utterly destroy what you want, when you want, and only to destroy the things that you want destroyed.

Currently, electromagnetic attack has a small edge over electromagnetic defense because defense is reactive, while offense takes the initiative.

Directed energy weapons, specifically lasers, may become a threat in the near future, especially to aircraft.

The U.S. faces a threat of information (computer) warfare being waged against it. But at least we know the threat: we can defend against it, indeed, we have become pretty good at doing so, witness the considerable efforts that have been devoted to network defense. In terms of attack, I don't know what we have, but the publication seems to indicate that we probably have some offensive IW capabilities in the Armed Forces, not to mention the NSA... This is a good thing. We ought to get more IW systems and capabilities. They're cheap, easily safeguarded, and the amount of intelligence gained, exploitation accomplished, and damage potentially that could be done is incredible.

Psychological operations, on the other hand, find an asymmetry building against the United States' present capabilities; this is due to the Internet, and the ability to get (and send) multiple channels of information rather than only hearing the same disciplined message repeated again and again in a myriad of ways: enemies can collaborate too--and use the channels of the Internet to deliver their own PSYOP message. How to counter: don’t prevent the enemy from delivering their PSYOP message, instead defeat that message through your own devastating correlation of facts and arguments—defeat their ideas in pitched battle, not by trying to prevent the message from getting out in the first place. We can do that, but we must avoid, once again, blurring the moral boundaries between us and them.

Fortunately, over the long run, the asymmetries unleashed by the Internet and free, unfettered access to information will ultimately build a correlation of forces that, at first, lopsidedly, but eventually, devastatingly favors Western humanistic and democratic ideals (if not Westerners themselves); the government doesn't realize this, but ultimately the wide dissemination of information and interaction is far more threatening to dictatorships and fanatics than to democracies. The Internet is to knowledge like nuclear weapons are to war: they change the game entirely. And we're on the winning side.)